Philip Gladro from Baltic Agra in Germany walks through the John Deere HD 45X flex cutting platform on the X9 1100 combine. He covers its efficiency in wheat harvesting, how it handles throughput, and why the design makes operation easier.
Hello, my name is Philip Gladro, I'm from the island of Rugen in Germany. I work at Baltic Agra. I have been operating combines for almost 10 years and this is my second year on a X9 1100. I have operated some other makes in the past though. With thresh wheat yielding 9 to 10 tonnes, the straw is still a bit. Ideally we achieve a throughput of about 80 to 90 tonnes per hour. If the straw had been allowed to ripen for another week, the throughput would be a little higher. For all intents and purposes, the cutting platform is the most crucial point as the combine's performance depends on it. The HD 45X header is a flex cutting platform with two belts that feed the crop towards the center as well as one belt plus one drum that transfers the crop to the feeder house. The cutting platform is flexible. It has two pivoting outside parts and this is especially beneficial. With these 45 foot cutting platform widths, we can mow the entire working width with extremely short stubble and have no problems with laid crops. As far as comfort in the cab is concerned, the operation is actually relatively simple. The way all the controls are organized using a few soft keys below the display. This makes the job a little easier because you don't have to go into the menu. The joystick has an easy and simple structure. We don't have any keys with duplicate assignments. Everything is very easy to operate. Everything else can be found here on the display. Everything that is needed quickly, whatever is important for thrashing is only one or two clicks away. As for the engine, once you have gotten used to it a bit, after the first couple of days you learn how the engine runs and most importantly up to which RPM the engine can go down. I have heard many people say the engine reminds them of a forage harvester and that is indeed the case if you have experience operating one of them. There is almost no power range the engine cannot handle. We harvest with less losses and produce good threshing and straw quality. The throughput of this combine is really excellent. You can watch around in the market. Just a few models come close, if any at all.
